Talk:Israel
Where to start... The flag template with Adopted|Designer|Proportion and Notes is not very useful - there are to many quirks in general. For this cparticular case, adoption date is complicated (as in many c ases) by different dates of signing of the document adopting the flag, the date of publication in the official gazette, the date of it becoming valid etc. Also, the actual adoption date in e.g. parliament may also be different from the date of signing, then there may be dates of first official use, of first oficial hoisting, of inetrnetaional recognition and other dates that may more correctly indicate the begining of use of certain flag... OK, let's stop this part here and go on... Designer Morris Harris is highly disputed claim and FOTW recounts at least two more stories - the serious researchers are reluctant to approve Mr. Harris the primacy and it is believed that the flag in this form was used on 3rd Zionist Congress (writing this from memory, should check), while the previous two a similar flag with golden "Herzel's star" was used - including seven aditional stars and lion. Proportions are in this case declared by law, but in many cases this shall be a point of dificult decisions. (I would preffer to see proportions like I am used to in vex-books, as bold small letter proportions, say in lower right end of the flag... just a matter of taste I guess OK, now let's got to the text part... Star of David shoudl be Shield of David (Magen David). Beside the overall proportions the legislation (and FOTW) provide much more construction detalis (btw, I haven't checked if the SVG file actually follow those). Symbolism - ugh... What's Numbers 15? I guess some reference to talith/tzitzit religious requirement (but I would have to check)... The stripes are taken from traditional design of talith - the Jewish prayer shawl and these stripes are never mentioned nowhere in the Bible. The "Star of David" is hardly "a symbol of Israel for a long time"... of course, it depends what you mean by long time... The Magen David becomes symbols of Jewish community of Prague in 15th century and beofre that time it has no particular symbolism connected with Jews/Judaism/Israel at all. Although it does appear in some older instances, it is used merly as ornamentation (e.g. in old synagogues) where it is used just as any other nice pattern, or it is used in connection with alkemic and other hermetic scripts (of which some are in Hebrew) again with no connection with Jews and certainly not as their symbol. From Prague the use of Magen David spread in other European Jewish communities like Amsterdam and Vienna, first as an ornamental symbol and latter as symbol that would be "parallel" (or imitation) to the Christian cross, denoting the Judaism. In 17th century it appeared in Vienna denoting Jewish getto beside the christian cross on stones marking the border between the two parts of town - this may very well be the first instance of the Magen David being used to denote Jews in general. The Magen David has no ritual meaning in any Jewish religious ceremonies and is not mentioned in the Jewish holy scripts at all - which is party a reason why the Zionists (who were far from all religious) readilly accepted the symbol. General Jewish acceptance of the Magen David as the symbols of Judaism is, at least in part, result of its misuse by Nazis in the World War II. So much for symbolsim (well, symbolism of colours white and blue is missing :) Regarding the Notes, I believe that it is the first time that I hear about "Many government officials want the blue stripes removed off the flag." Huh! Would you care to elaborate... :Wow! You're really into this! Thanky ou so much for your comments! ;-) I'll see if I can come up with a soltuion to these problems. Anyway, the symbolism of the blue stripes are mentioned in Numbers 15:37, in the Bible. I'll add some of that in there soon. Thanks again! FlagFreak |" 19:09, 20 September 2007 (UTC)